CBS News is giving up the left-wing ghost? (legacy media community)

[C C]

Major makeover. No wonder the new boss axed Colbert. Watch out, FOX News (cable): An over-the-air network finally presenting a challenger?
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Next Up with Mark Halperin
https://youtu.be/-b7j--cAUYg

VIDEO EXCERPTS: Bari Weiss is taking over the editor-in chief role of CBS News. [...] David Ellison, a very wealthy purchaser, a new CEO of Paramount Sky Dance, hired Bari Weiss, who I'm friendly with, to be the editor-in chief of CBS News. And Bari has done this on the strength of the extraordinary success she's had at the Free Press.

[...] So CBS News is in bad shape and as purchased by someone in Ellison who wants to have a strong news division. He wants CBS News to thrive, and he's not an idiot. He's got eyes and ears, and he can see CBS News has been a disaster.

So he's buying a tarnished property, and he's trying to figure out how to fix it up. How to take what is the strength of CBS News, which is the extraordinary reach that it has. Something where, if you put money behind it, you can grow it. And he's brought in Bari Weiss.

Bari Weiss is an extraordinary person, and an extraordinary force in journalism. She's an independent. She started the Free Press as an independent organization with investment from some very wealthy, very smart people who saw the potential of the idea.

But she also understands legacy media, and I'm not going to compare myself to Bari because Bari is a legend. But I understand where Bari's coming from, in part because I now have gone to independent media.

But I also understand legacy media. I was in legacy media longer than Bari. But Bari at the Wall Street Journal, at the New York Times, is a student of media. She really understands the weaknesses of legacy media that she'll confront at CBS News when she starts this job next week.

But she also understands the strengths. Legacy media still has some strengths, which I'll talk about.

Now, why did Barry leave the legacy media? Why did she leave the New York Times? They treated her horribly. And not only did they treat her horribly, with a woke mob criticizing her on internal Slack channels and threatening her, but then they didn't cover the story, and they still aren't covering the story correctly.

They're still whitewashing the circumstances under which Bari left the Times. She left the Times because a woke mob chased her out. And rather than leave journalism or rather than be traumatized by it to the point of inaction, she built the Free Press. In three short years, she built an organization that is a real deal.

And part of the deal with CBS, not only are they getting Bari to be the editor-in-chief, they're purchasing the Free Press. So now the Free Press will have access to all sorts of things as it has a partnership with CBS.

How did Barry do it? First of all...

What's really behind CBS News staff meltdown over Bari Weiss? ... https://youtu.be/-b7j--cAUYg

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/-b7j--cAUYg

[Magical Realist]

Meh...CBS was always considered by America as "the old people's network." It was only a matter of time. And every show on that network just sucks. The only good ones like Star Trek and Seal Team and Evil they put on Paramount streaming. But they still beat watching the godawful gameshows and bachelor shows of ABC.

[Yazata]

I don't really think that hiring Bari Weiss will make CBS into a Conservative competitor to Fox News.

My impression of Bari Weiss is that she is an old-fashioned liberal, like democrats were back in the 20th century. What got her tarred and feathered and chased out of the left isn't just that she's an outspoken free-speech advocate, but also that she's Jewish and a supporter of Israel.

While I expect CBS News to continue to tilt left (probably 90% of its staff are democrats) if we are lucky there might be greater willingness to have Republicans on and to treat them fairly when they are. Hopefully a lot less Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Ideally, CBS News might be watchable again.

[Magical Realist]

CBS's 60 Minutes is THE paragon of good TV journalism. I don't see it goin the way of the 700 Club.

[C C]

I don't really think that hiring Bari Weiss will make CBS into a Conservative competitor to Fox News.

My impression of Bari Weiss is that she is an old-fashioned liberal, like democrats were back in the 20th century. What got her tarred and feathered and chased out of the left isn't just that she's an outspoken free-speech advocate, but also that she's Jewish and a supporter of Israel.

While I expect CBS News to continue to tilt left (probably 90% of its staff are democrats) if we are lucky there might be greater willingness to have Republicans on and to treat them fairly when they are. Hopefully a lot less Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Ideally, CBS News might be watchable again.

The CBS staff is so far left and entitled, though, that an old-fashioned liberal, centrist, or independent is a controversial right-winger to them. It may be that she ultimately can't change the orientation and way the place is run if they're going to cling to all or most of the existing personnel.

https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/art...f-cbs-news

EXCERPT: Weiss defies easy characterization, though she has sometimes been called a “radical centrist.” At a TED Talk in April 2024, she said she voted for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2012 and Democrats Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden for president in 2016 and 2020.

She is pro-choice, proudly pro-Israel, and believes in gay marriage “so much so that I’m actually in one myself.” But she also believes that mandatory school lockdowns during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic were “a big mistake” and that people should be hired based on merit.

“I am -- or at least until a few seconds ago in historical time, I used to be -- considered a standard-issue liberal,” said Weiss at the TED Talk. “And yet somehow, in our most intellectual and prestigious spaces, many of the ideas I just outlined and others like them, have become provocative or controversial, which is really a polite way of saying unwelcome.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world...41070.html

EXCERPT: The sarcastic reaction from some CBS journalists to Weiss’ first full proclamation to the newsroom isn’t entirely unexpected, considering that much of the staff had not only expressed trepidation over her impending arrival but were “literally freaking out” over the wholesale changes new Paramount owner David Ellison has been implementing at the Tiffany network.

[...] On top of that, as sources have told The Independent, CBS News is already “not a welcoming place for outsiders,” noting that “the idea that somebody that we don't want is going to come in here and somehow manage to survive this is, I think, laughable.”

[...] “She is richer in social clout than in Emmys or Pulitzers. And she is known more for wanting to rid the world of so-called wokeness than for promoting journalistic traditions. While newsroom leaders do not traditionally trumpet their personal beliefs, Ms. Weiss has described herself as a ‘left-leaning centrist,’ a ‘radical centrist,’ ‘a gay woman who is moderately pro-choice’ — she is married to Nellie Bowles, a former Times reporter who is a co-founder of The Free Press — and a proud recipient of the label ‘Zionist fanatic.’” Testa wrote.

“Yet she has also come to symbolize the power and potential of independent media. Her world is a patchwork of podcasts, newsletters and videos built around a common idea that legacy outlets have lost their authority and connection with readers,” Testa continued.

[Yazata]

https://www.creators.com/read/tim-graham...t-cbs-news

(Highlighting by me)

"...freakout has begun inside the liberal media over the new owners of CBS News appointing "anti-woke" Bari Weiss to the new post of editor-in-chief. None of the CBS veterans want a new boss with a new ideology. They like pretending they don't have an ideology. They call themselves courageously "independent."

Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison wants to put CBS News firmly in the middle: "We want CBS to speak to that 70% of the audience that would really define themselves as center-left to center-right."

In her initial memo to employees, Weiss stated several principles that are absolute anathema inside CBS: "Journalism that holds both American political parties to equal scrutiny," and "Journalism that embraces a wide spectrum of views and voices so that the audience can contend with the best arguments on all sides of a debate."

The anonymous leakers are already on fire. Jeremy Barr of The Guardian spread the early spurts...

...

...Can CBS actually move to the center? And will that expose how tilted the other networks are every day? It must be a terrifying prospect for the badly named "mainstream media." Because merely adding Democrat scandals and policy failures to the definition of "newsworthiness" is a nightmare, a concept they refuse to accept."